Bnpositive's Blog

I absolutely love playing Monopoly. I would love to participate in a Monopoly tournament and I can have that chance now on the Hasbro Monopoly website.

What I didn’t realize is that there is a TON of strategy and statistics that should be known to be a complete master of this game. That I don’t have yet.

Part of the process for making it to the tournament selection process is to get 16 out of 20 Monopoly related multiple-choice questions correct. I only got 13. Makes me feel like an idiot and will probably curse me to spend FAR too much time reading strategy tips on a variety of Monopoly related websites. Just do a search for Monopoly strategy on Google and you’ll have plenty of reading.

A couple of weeks ago I posted the video of a commercial that’s been hitting the small screen lately that’s promoting just how easy it is to use Windows Live Photo Gallery.

It’s a part of a larger series all focused around "rookies" or novices using Windows products and applications.

The question we raised before that we’ll keep asking. Is it really that simple? Some people think so, but I’m interested in hearing more opinions from people that haven’t made it to the small screen commercial career yet.

Have you filed your taxes yet this year? Did you owe? Did you get a huge refund? Not sure if you realize it or not but if you’ve got everything setup correctly for your withholdings you should come out with as close to no refund or no penalty as possible.

The goal is to keep as much of your money out of each paycheck as possible without giving the government an interest free loan to use throughout the year.

If you get a refund, you’ve given the government a free ride on your money for the last 12+ months. If you owe money, you’re not paying your fair share.

You can use the IRS Withholding Calculator to determine the best amounts to have withheld each paycheck from your employer. It could come in very handy for you this coming year.

Uncover some more of your paycheck with the IRS Withholding Calculator.

One of the things I heard last night in the President’s address to Congress and the American people is that there’s been a new website setup for the economic bailout. It can surely be said he is still using technology and social media to expand his touch and communication with the citizens of the United States and anyone else that wants to listen.

The Recovery.gov website was setup to let taxpayers identify and understand where the money they’re lending to all these people is actually going. I like the transparency of it all. Let’s hope it’s stays accurate and updated in a timely fashion.

One thing I saw that was missing is an RSS feed for me to stay up-to-date on what’s happening on the site without me having to go back regularly and check for myself.

Go get your information on your bailout yourself at…

www.recovery.gov

Image: Snagit of recovery.gov website homepage

We’ve been looking for some files lately that seemingly just can’t be found on Microsoft websites that state they should be there.

You can click on the image above to have a perfect example. When you click on the image it will enlarge to full-size and you can see what I’m seeing. On the page is the statement:

Please download the attached file that contains the previous service pack release notes.

Do you see a link somewhere that I’m not seeing? If you do, please let me know. You’d think this should be obvious, and it appears to be, except for the actual link to download something.

We just can’t find it anywhere.

Image: Snagit of Microsoft Support website

Here’s handy little site when you need a timer of some sorts. You can either have a stopwatch functionality or a countdown timer as shown in the screen shot above. The site also has a little download application for you to use when you’re offline too.

www.online-stopwatch.com

It’s hard not to laugh at this, I’m sure it seriously hurt. I want to know how it go posted. Is Scarlet laughing now about it, or did one of her friends get the video and post it against her will?

Falling wasn’t the problem here, it was falling on the side of the table! OUCH!

I went to Quizno’s today for lunch. That was before I was aware of the Quizno’s 1,000,000 Sub Giveaway.

They’re giving away 1,000,000 free subs and are only up to 161,536 when I registered for my free one.

However, although I didn’t know what it was talking about at the time, the Quizno’s location I went to today had a sign posted that they were NOT honoring any coupons for a free sub. So, not sure what that’s all about.

Can’t hurt to try it though. It makes a great lunch, that’s for sure. And FREE always makes food taste better.

I will say their normal website could use some work. Trying to view a menu of items and order online did not go smoothly for me. I finally gave up. Didn’t matter though, that same location didn’t do online orders either.

Thanks to Cherie at Queen of Free for finally sharing the link with me to sign-up for my free sub.

Image: Snagit of Quizno’s Million Sub site

Have you ever wondered to enjoy some seriously classic films from the "good ‘ol days" and do it for free at your convenience? You can even get many of these movies from Blockbuster or Netflix.

Classis Cinema Online is a great resource to enjoy some great films.

www.classiccinemaonline.com

If you’ll remember, a few months back Microsoft laid off 1400 employees as part of some cost-cutting and downsizing measures.

News today let’s us know that some of the employees affected by those layoffs were a little overpaid in their severance while others may have been underpaid. Microsoft sent letters to the affected ex-employees and asked for the overpayment of money to be sent back to them within two weeks.

I can understand why Microsoft would want this corrected, but I can’t imagine why they’d want to endure the more than likely ridicule and bad favor by the affected employees and public at large for this move.

I don’t know any of the specifics, but it doesn’t appear that every employee was overpaid since some were also underpaid. I don’t think anyone was overpaid a significant amount of money (5 figures?). If I were Microsoft, I would just absorb the loss of money and quickly take care of the underpayment to the other laid off employees.

If employees pay back the money their “reward” is an adjusted tax form so that aren’t taxed on the additional income. Again, I’m not sure about you, but in this economy I’d be keeping the money and taking the hit on the additional tax payment.

I still think the “cost” of this becoming public with Microsoft asking for the money back will “cost” them more in additional bad press, than any amount of Seinfeld ads may have done for them to try and improve their image.

This actually happened to me once with a previous employer. I was overpaid due to some kind of clerical error and when I noticed it I brought it to the attention of my manager. They let me know they were also aware of it and that I wouldn’t be asked to return the money. It was their mistake and they would pay for it. The economic times were much different then than today, but I’ve got to think if there’s any company that could absorb this accounting oops it would be Microsoft.

Image: Scott Waldron www.dslrninja.com from  flickr image from dslrninja

I don’t know why people turn off the ability to have these videos embedded sometimes, but you should check out this video of some pretty funny and painful sports bloopers.

I had to turn away a couple of times. Just can’t deal with some of the skateboard falls. OUCH!

If you liked that, then you’ll probably enjoy this one as well.

Image: Snagit of YouTube video

Microsoft has relaunched their Microsoft Office Labs website with a completely new redesign using the Silverlight development platform.

Milo Riano walks us through the transition and options of availability in his recent article about the change.

There’s quite a bit of interesting tools available from the site that you can use to increase your productivity in Office or just give yourself some new tools to help make Office a little bit more than it is currently.